Doctrine and Reality in Afghanistan

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Doctrine and Reality in Afghanistan
Adam Roberts
To cite this Article Roberts, Adam(2009) 'Doctrine and Reality in Afghanistan',
Survival, 51: 1, 29 — 60
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The limitations of military doctrines and practice are often exposed, not by
arguments, but by events. Thus it was mainly events in Iraq and Afghanistan
that exposed the inadequacies of the so-called ‘revolution in military affairs’
– an idea that was popular in the United States from the mid 1990s until at
least 2003.1 Now, Afghanistan – and the situation in Pakistan with which it
is inextricably linked – is proving to be a harsh test of the revived ideas of
counter-insurgency.
Afghanistan was always likely to be a difficult theatre of operations for
outside military forces. Seeing this (and perhaps also because he did not
want an ongoing distraction from the future invasion of Iraq, for which he
was already lobbying), then-US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
said in November 2001:
In fact, one of the lessons of Afghanistan’s history, which we’ve tried to
apply in this campaign, is if you’re a foreigner, try not to go in. If you go
in, don’t stay too long, because they don’t tend to like any foreigners who
stay too long.2
The wars in Afghanistan in the nineteenth century have been the foundation
for a view of the country and its peoples – especially the latter – as
Doctrine and Reality in

Afghanistan
Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts is President-elect of the British Academy and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for
International Studies in Oxford University’s Department of Politics and International Relations. He is also an
Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. He was the Montague Burton Professor of International Relations
at
Oxford University from 1986 to the end of 2007.
Survival | vol. 51 no. 1 | February–March 2009 | pp. 29–60 DOI 10.1080/00396330902749673
Downloaded At: 18:52 5 July 2010
30 | Adam Roberts
unusually resistant to any kind of foreign influence or control, actual or
perceived. David Loyn, the veteran BBC reporter on Afghanistan who has
charted these previous conflicts, argues that mistakes are being repeated
today because of a neglect of the study of history. He charges that the
United States and Britain have failed to understand the extent of resistance
in Afghanistan to anything that looks like foreign control.3
The war in 1979–89 between the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan
and its mujahadeen adversaries contributed to the collapse of the Soviet
empire – not only proof of the fateful consequences that may flow from war
in Afghanistan, but also one driver of the present war. The channelling of
much international aid to mujahadeen groups through Pakistan reinforced
the fateful link between events in Pakistan and those in Afghanistan. The
power of non-state groups and regional military chiefs, and their tendency
to rely on threats and uses of force not controlled by any state, became
more deeply ingrained than before in both Afghanistan and the frontier
areas of Pakistan. The religious element in Afghan politics did not disappear
with the departure of Soviet forces in 1989. Indeed, within a few years
religious warriors trained in the hard school of combat against Soviet forces
in Afghanistan were to turn up in a wide range of other locations, including
in the former Yugoslavia. These legacies of the war against Soviet control
remain most important in Afghanistan itself. The problems of non-state violence,
regional rivalries and the religious element in politics are not new to
Afghanistan, but they were reinforced. Above all, the old instinctive suspicion
of foreign projects is still there.
Following the withdrawal of the last Soviet forces from Afghanistan in
January 1989, there was an internal crisis and civil war that has never really
ended. The first phase was only partially concluded on 26 September 1996
when Kabul fell to the Taliban, which established a theocratic style of
government
throughout the areas under their control. The United Islamic Front
for the Salvation of Afghanistan, or Northern Alliance, continued to control
an area of northern Afghanistan and to challenge Taliban rule. Following
the 11 September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, direct US and
coalition military intervention in Afghanistan changed the character of this
continuing war. It became, for a few months, a war between sovereign states
Doctrine and Reality in Afghanistan | 31
– the US-led coalition versus the Taliban government of Afghanistan. In
November–December 2001 the US-led intervention, and the military campaign
of the Northern Alliance, toppled the Taliban regime, which had been
supported by al-Qaeda. Initially there was much enthusiasm in Kabul and
elsewhere for the incoming International Security Assistance Force (ISAF),
but this situation was to change.
The international war in 2001 had been superimposed on two more enduring
conflicts: between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, and between
the United States and its allies against al-Qaeda terrorists. Both continued.
The war against al-Qaeda and related terrorists, now based in Pakistan as
well as Afghanistan, carried on without interruption. In addition, there was
growing resistance in southern Afghanistan to the new regime. This insurgency
began relatively slowly, so that its seriousness was not recognised for
some time. It is commonly labelled the ‘Taliban insurgency’ – a description
that may conceal the possibility that the sources of support for the insurgency
have been more numerous than the label ‘Taliban’ suggests, or that
the ideology of the Taliban may have evolved. The insurgent movement has
drawn on elements of both Afghan and Pashtun nationalism; it has operated
alongside traditional forms of social organisation and systems of justice; its
recruiting has been facilitated by Afghanistan’s high levels of unemployment
and by the fact that it is able to pay its soldiers good money; and
its willingness to support poppy cultivation adds to its support in certain
provinces while exposing the incoherence of the various NATO countries on
this issue.4 None of this is to suggest that all those forces labelled ‘Taliban’
should be seen simply as heroic patriots or as Pashtun traditionalists. Ahmed
Rashid has written:
The United States and NATO have failed to understand that the Taliban
belong to neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan, but are a lumpen population,
the product of refugee camps, militarised madrassas, and the lack of
opportunities in the borderland of Pakistan and Afghanistan. They have
neither been true citizens of either country nor experienced traditional
Pashtun tribal society. The longer the war goes on, the more deeply rooted
and widespread the Taliban and their transnational milieu will become.5
32 | Adam Roberts
Into this ongoing conflict a new element was added from 2005: the involvement
in combat activities of contingents of the NATO-led ISAF. Initially the
UK had taken the lead in organising ISAF in January 2002, followed at sixmonthly
intervals by other ‘lead states’ until NATO as such took over in
August 2003. ISAF’s remit gradually extended across Afghanistan, and in
some provinces came to involve direct combat.6 By 2006 ISAF comprised
troops from 32 countries. Those deployed in the southern provinces of
Afghanistan became increasingly geared to a counter-insurgency campaign,
the transition to which resulted in uneven burden-sharing between NATO
member states. NATO had put itself in the unenviable position of staking its
impressive reputation on the outcome of a distant and little-understood war
in a country well known to be a graveyard for foreign military adventures.
The involvement of outsiders has one further special characteristic: it is
based on short-term tours of duty, so there is remarkably limited institutional
memory, especially as regards knowledge of local communities
and political traditions. Few outsiders involved in
international civil and military work in Afghanistan have
learned the relevant languages.
One feature of the ongoing war in Afghanistan that distinguishes
it from some other post-Cold War US involvements
has been that the US-led forces had, at the start, significant
allies within the country: originally the Northern Alliance,
then the government of Afghanistan. This made the Afghan
involvement different from some of the other conflicts in
which the United States has been involved, including Iraq in the first years
of the US-led presence and Somalia over a much longer period. But this
apparently favourable situation had inherent limitations and was vulnerable
to change. The Northern Alliance, even at the best of times an unstable
coalition, never controlled all of Afghanistan. The Afghan authorities
conspicuously
lacked the bureaucratic back-up that provides the essential
underpinning of most governments around the world. The Pashtuns generally
resented the Northern Alliance’s US-assisted victory in December 2001;
and when, around 2003–04, the Pashtuns came back strongly in the government
(thanks to the new constitution and law on political parties), Afghan
There is
remarkably
limited
institutional
memory
opinion critical of the United States found a voice. Indeed, the boot was now
on the other foot, with minorities complaining of Pashtun nationalism and
structural exclusion.
Afghanistan’s neighbours – including China, Iran, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – all have legitimate interests in the country
and its long-running conflicts. Many other states, including India and
Russia, also have legitimate interests in whether Afghanistan can manage to
stay together, make progress in development, and attract refugees back. The
relationship with Pakistan is the most complex, and has contributed most
to Afghanistan’s ongoing divisions. The Pakistan connection has deeply
affected events in Afghanistan in all the wars there since the Soviet intervention
in 1979. Throughout, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has had
a major, and not always controlled, role. In the 1980s Pakistan, with massive
Western support, provided crucial assistance for the anti-Soviet rebels in
Afghanistan. Then from 1994 onwards there was extensive Pakistani official
support for the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.7
In the ongoing war in Afghanistan a number of consequences have flowed
from the Pakistan connection. The first is that, since Pashtuns on either side
of the border are more likely than most others to view the Western military
presence in Afghanistan as illegitimate, there is inevitably a trans-border
hinterland for the insurgency. Second, since Pashtuns play a large part in the
Pakistan Army, and in the Frontier Corps which comes under the Ministry
of Interior, there are built-in difficulties in Pakistani government attempts
to impose Islamabad’s rule by force on the Pashtun-inhabited areas.8 As a
consequence, the insurgency in southern Afghanistan is likely for the foreseeable
future to have safe base areas inside Pakistan. Like so many border
regions in the world, the Pakistan–Afghanistan border presents excellent
opportunities for the organisation and continuation of insurgency.
This leads to a third consequence of the Pakistan connection: the strong
pressure on the United States to take the war unilaterally into Pakistani territory.
US policy towards Pakistan notoriously lacks strategic coherence.9
The fact that Washington considers the Pakistani authorities unreliable, with
certain elements willing to pass on intelligence to America’s enemies, means
that the US military role on the territory of Pakistan cannot be based on close
34 | Adam Roberts
military cooperation. As a result, US military action in Pakistan is bound to
be perceived as an infringement of Pakistan’s sovereignty. George W. Bush’s
presidential order of July 2008, authorising US strikes in Pakistan without
seeking the approval of the Pakistan government, while an understandable
reaction to a troubling situation on the border, risks further destabilising a
country that is a crucial if deeply flawed ally.10
Revival of doctrine
Contrary to myth, counter-insurgency campaigns can sometimes be effective.
Doctrines and practices of counter-insurgency – the best of which draw on a
wide and varied range of practice – have a long history.11 The revival of
counterinsurgency
doctrine in the past few years has been driven primarily by events
in Iraq, but also, if to a lesser degree, by the development of the insurgency in
Afghanistan. This revival is hardly surprising. The response of adversaries to
the extraordinary pattern of US dominance on the battlefield was always going
to be one of unconventional warfare, including the methods of the guerrilla
and the terrorist; and in turn the natural US counter-response was to revive the
most obviously appropriate available body of military doctrine.
The key document of the US revival of counter-insurgency doctrine is
US Army Field Manual 3-24.12 It is very much an Army and Marine Corps
manual: the US Air Force refused to collaborate in the exercise. Improbably
for a military-doctrinal document, it has been in demand with a general
readership in the United States. It has been heavily accessed on and downloaded
from the Web, and is available as a published book from a major
university press.13 Although it has some flaws, it is a significant contribution
to counter-insurgency literature. By contrast, the UK has not produced any
major new manual. This is partly because the British had extant doctrine,14
but also because there was some opposition to counter-insurgency doctrine
on the grounds that it would result in the same hammer being used on
every problem. Sir John Kiszely, until 2008 director of the Defence Academy
of the UK, offered the down-to-earth reminder that ‘every insurgency is sui
generis, making generalizations problematic’.15
The ’comprehensive approach‘, central to both the US and UK doctrines,
essentially means the application of all aspects of the power of the state
within the territory of which the insurgency is being fought. The apparent
assumption that there is a state with real power is the key weakness of the
approach, especially as it applies to Afghanistan. Before exploring this in
more detail, it may be useful to glance at the problematic nature of assumptions
about the political realm in the counter-insurgency doctrines inherited
from past eras.
The lessons of history
The US manual revives and updates doctrines that were developed in the
Cold War years in response to anti-colonial insurrections (some of them
involving leadership by local communist parties). It relies especially heavily
on two sources.16 The first is David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare – one
of the better writings of the French thinkers on guerre révolutionnaire.17 The
second is Sir Robert Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency.18 Both
placed emphasis on protecting populations as distinct from killing adversaries
– a crucial distinction which implies a need for high force levels.
According to the Introduction, the new US manual aspires to ‘help
prepare Army and Marine Corps leaders to conduct [counter-insurgency]
operations anywhere in the world’.19 This might seem to imply a universalist
approach, but the authors emphasise that each insurgency is different.
The foreword by Generals David Petraeus and James Amos is emphatic on
this point: ‘You cannot fight former Saddamists and Islamic extremists the
same way you would have fought the Viet Cong, Moros, or Tupamaros; the
application of principles and fundamentals to deal with each varies considerably’.
20 The US manual also emphasises the importance of constantly
learning and adapting in response to the intricate environment of

counterinsurgency
operations – a point which strongly reflects British experience.21
Past exponents of counter-insurgency doctrine have generally placed
heavy emphasis on achieving force ratios of about 20–25 counter-insurgents
for every 1,000 residents in an area of operations. Noting this, the manual
states: ‘twenty counterinsurgents per 1000 residents is often considered
the minimum troop density required for effective [counter-insurgency]
operations; however as with any fixed ratio, such calculations remain very
dependent upon the situation’.22 This emphasis on force ratios is contro-
36 | Adam Roberts
versial. In any case, in Afghanistan there appears little chance of achieving
such numbers. If the entire country with its 31 million inhabitants were to
be viewed as the area of operations, a staggering 775,000 counter-insurgents
would be needed. Even if the area of operations is defined
narrowly, and even allowing for the fact that not all have to
be NATO or other foreign troops, the prospects of getting
close to this force ratio must be low.
A flaw in some past counter-insurgency doctrine has been
a lack of sensitivity to context and, in some cases, an ahistorical
character. Some specialists in counter-insurgency have
seen their subject more as a struggle of light versus darkness
than as a recurrent theme of history or an outgrowth of
the problems of a society. Examples of such an ahistorical
approach to the subject can be found in the French group of theorists writing
in the 1950s and early 1960s about guerre révolutionnaire. Some denied the
complexities – especially the mixture of material, moral and ideological
factors – that are keys to understanding why and how guerrilla and terrorist
movements come into existence. Colonel Charles Lacheroy, a leading figure
in this group and head of the French Army’s Service d’Action Psychologique,
famously stated: ‘in the beginning there is nothing’.23 Terrorism was seen as
having been introduced deliberately into a peaceful society by an omnipresent
outside force – international communism. It is a demonological vision
of a cosmic struggle in which the actual history of particular countries and
ways of thinking has little or no place.
A related fault in some counter-insurgency writing was the tendency
to distil general rules of counter-insurgency from particular struggles and
then seek to apply them in radically different circumstances. The campaign
in Malaya in the 1950s, because it was successful in ending a communist-led
insurgency, was often upheld as a model, and is described favourably in
the new US field manual.24 Although they do not appear to have been elevated
into formal doctrine, certain lessons drawn partly from Malaya were
subsequently applied by the British in Borneo and Oman with some effect.
However, successes such as that in Malaya can be great deceivers. Attempts
to apply the lessons of Malaya in South Vietnam in the 1960s largely failed.25
There is little
chance of
achieving
such
numbers
The main reason was that conditions in Vietnam were utterly different from
those in Malaya. In Malaya the insurgency had mainly involved the ethnic
Chinese minority, and had never managed to present itself convincingly as
representing the totality of the inhabitants of Malaya. The insurgency was
weakened by the facts that the Chinese minority was distinguishable from
other segments of society; Malaya had no common frontier with a communist
state, so infiltration was difficult; and the British granting of independence
to Malaya undermined the anti-colonial credentials of the insurgents. In
South Vietnam, by contrast, the communist insurgents had strong nationalist
credentials, having fought for independence rather than merely having
power handed to them by a departing colonial power.26 At the heart of the
US tragedy in Vietnam was a failure to recognise the unique circumstance of
the case – that in Vietnam, more than any other country in Southeast Asia,
communism and nationalism were inextricably intertwined.
One lesson that could have been drawn from the Malayan case is that it is
sometimes necessary to withdraw to win. The new US manual places much
emphasis on the fact that the United States withdrew from Vietnam in 1973
only to see Saigon fall to North Vietnamese forces in 1975.27 It does not note
a contrary case: the UK promise to withdraw completely – a promise that
was followed by the Federation of Malaya’s independence in 1957 – contributed
to the defeat of the insurgency in Malaya.28 The value of such promises
needs to be taken into account in contemporary counter-insurgency efforts
and indeed counter-insurgency theory. This is especially so, as the idea that
the United States intended to stay indefinitely in Iraq and Afghanistan, and
to build networks of bases there, had a corrosive effect in both countries and
more generally. The decision of the Iraqi cabinet on 16 November 2008 that
all US forces will withdraw from Iraq by 2011 is evidence that a guarantee
of withdrawal is seen as a necessary condition (and not simply a natural
consequence) of ending an acute phase of insurgency.
Other weaknesses
One weakness in the US manual, likely to be remedied in any future revisions,
is the lack of serious coverage of systems of justice – especially those
employed by the insurgents themselves. The references to judicial systems
38 | Adam Roberts
in the manual are brief and anodyne, almost entirely ignoring the challenge
posed by insurgents in this area.29 Insurgencies commonly use their
own judicial procedures to reinforce their claims to be able to preserve an
existing social order or create a better one. The Taliban have always placed
emphasis on provision of a system of Islamic justice.30 In the current conflict,
taking advantage of the fact that the governmental legal system is weak and
corrupt, they have done this effectively in parts of Afghanistan.
This leads to a more general criticism. In addressing the problem of undermining
and weakening insurgencies, both traditional counter-insurgency
theory and its revived versions in the twenty-first century place emphasis on
the role of state institutions: political structures, the administrative bureaucracy,
the police, the courts and the armed forces. The institutions are often
taken for granted, and assumed to be strong. Indeed, the current British
counter-insurgency doctrine stemmed from a project started in 1995 to
capture the lessons and doctrine from Northern Ireland. A common criticism
of much counter-insurgency practice is that it was enthusiastically pursued
by over-powerful and thuggish states, especially in Latin America.31
Today, counter-insurgency theories risk being out of joint with the realities
of assisting the so-called ‘failed states’ and ‘transitional administrations’
of the twenty-first century. These problems are not new; one of the problems
that undermined US counter-insurgency efforts in Vietnam was the
artificiality and weakness of the coup-prone state of South
Vietnam. Yet the central fact must be faced that in the two
test-beds of the new counter-insurgency doctrines of recent
years, Iraq and Afghanistan, state institutions have been
notoriously weak. Indeed, in post-colonial states generally,
where insurgencies are by no means uncommon, indigenous
state systems tend to be fragile or contested. The role of the
state in people’s lives, and in their consciousness, may be
thoroughly peripheral or even negative.32 So when the US
manual speaks of ‘a comprehensive strategy employing all
instruments of national power’ and stresses that all efforts focus on ‘supporting
the local populace and [host-nation] government’,33 it is necessary
to remind ourselves that support for government is not exactly a natural
State
institutions
have been
notoriously
weak
default position for inhabitants of countries with such tragic histories as
Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, General Petraeus worked on the
manual after two tours of duty in Iraq, with an eye to applying it there, and
then did so to some effect when he was commander of the Multinational
Force-Iraq. In 2009 the Iraqi government is looking stronger than in the first
years after the invasion. The fact that a government is weak in face of
insurgency
does not mean that it is necessarily fated to remain so.
Of the many critiques of the US revival of counter-insurgency doctrine,
one of the most searching is an American Political Science Association review
symposium published in June 2008.34 Stephen Biddle of the US Council on
Foreign Relations queried the manual’s fundamental assumption when he
stated that
it is far from clear that the manual’s central prescription of drying up an
insurgent’s support base by persuading an uncommitted population to
side with the government makes much sense in an identity war where the
government’s ethnic or sectarian identification means that it will be seen
as an existential threat to the security of rival internal groups, and where
there may be little or no supracommunal, national identity to counterpose
to the subnational identities over which the war is waged by the time the
United States becomes involved.35
Biddle also pointed out that the US manual has little to say about the
comparative merits of waging counter-insurgency with large conventional
forces as against small commando detachments, on the relative utility of
air power in counter-insurgency, and on the willingness of democracies
to support counter-insurgency over a long period. Further, the manual
does not fit particularly well the realities of Iraq, where the insurgencies
are far more regional and localised in character, and more fickle in their
loyalties, than were many of the communist and anti-colonial insurgencies
of earlier eras. As Biddle says, the negotiation of local ceasefires between
insurgents and US commanders has been of key importance in Iraq.36 Such
webs of local ceasefires, valuable despite their fragility, do not come from
counter-insurgency doctrine. These criticisms are another way of saying
40 | Adam Roberts
what General Petraeus knows, that all doctrine is interim, and some parts
are more interim than others.
The need to adapt doctrine, so evident in Iraq, applies even more strongly
to Afghanistan, a subject about which the US manual says remarkably little.37
The key issue is whether the revival of counter-insurgency doctrine really
offers a useful guide in a situation where there are some distinct elements in
the insurgencies, where negotiation with some of the insurgents may have a
role, and where the state does not command the same loyalty or obedience
that more local forces may enjoy.
After a difficult year in 2008, the US and Afghan governments began to
place increased emphasis on local social structures. The US Ambassador to
Afghanistan said at the end of the year that there was agreement to move
forward with two programmes: first, the community outreach programme,
‘designed to create community shuras’ (local councils); and second, the
community guard programme, which is ‘meant to strengthen local communities
and local tribes in their ability to protect what they consider to be their
traditional homes’.38 While neither programme was well defined, the move
in this direction was evidence of willingness to rely on a less state-based
approach than hitherto.
Air power
Since October 2001 air power, which mainly means US air power, has played
an important part in military operations in Afghanistan. The apparent
success of the use of air power in October–December 2001 was deceptive:
a major factor in the Taliban’s defeat was the advance of ground forces
of the Northern Alliance. Since then, the role of air power in the Afghan
conflict has been a subject of contestation, principally between the army
and marines on the one hand, and the US Air Force on the other. A key
issue has been whether air power is a major instrument in its own right, or
is mainly useful in supporting ground forces. Self-evidently, the US and
NATO ground forces in Afghanistan, widely dispersed and few in number,
frequently need air power in support of their ground operations. In military
terms, a ‘light footprint’ on the ground inevitably means a heavy air
presence.
Those planning coalition military operations in Afghanistan have shown
awareness of the dangers of reliance on air power – especially of the adverse
consequences of killing civilians. On occasion they have even claimed to
have set an aim of no civilian casualties.39 While this aim actually goes
further than the strict requirements of existing law applicable in an international
armed conflict, in practice it has not been achieved. Many factors have
prevented its realisation: shortage of ground forces, differing approaches
of individual commanders, poor intelligence, the heat of battle, weapons
malfunction, the co-location of military targets and civilians, and the frayed
relationship between ground and air forces operating in Afghanistan.40 A
Human Rights Watch report in September 2008 summarised the situation:
In the past three years, the armed conflict in Afghanistan has intensified,
with daily fighting between the Taliban and other anti-government
insurgents against Afghan government forces and its international
military supporters. The US, which operates in Afghanistan through
its counter-insurgency forces in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)
and as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF), has increasingly relied on airpower in counter-insurgency and
counter-terrorism operations. The combination of light ground forces
and overwhelming airpower has become the dominant doctrine of war
for the US in Afghanistan. The result has been large numbers of civilian
casualties, controversy over the continued use of airpower in Afghanistan,
and intense criticism of US and NATO forces by Afghan political leaders
and the general public.
As a result of Operation Enduring Freedom and ISAF airstrikes in 2006,
116 Afghan civilians were killed in 13 bombings. In 2007, Afghan civilian
deaths were nearly three times higher: 321 Afghan civilians were killed in 22
bombings, while hundreds more were injured. In 2007, more Afghan civilians
were killed by airstrikes than by US and NATO ground fire. In the first
seven months of 2008, the latest period for which data are available, at least
119 Afghan civilians were killed in 12 airstrikes.41 That last figure increased
dramatically when it was revealed in October 2008 that 33 civilians had
42 | Adam Roberts
been killed in a single US airstrike on 22 August. Such incidents do serious
damage to the coalition cause. Largely as a result of the long history of such
incidents, there has been a strong anti-coalition reaction. As early as 2006
the Afghan parliament had demonstrated its concern about coalition military
actions, and such expressions of concern have subsequently become
more frequent. Meanwhile, President Hamid Karzai, whose authority has
been diminishing, has made a number of criticisms of the coalition forces,
calling for an end to civilian casualties, and even stating that he wanted US
forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban members and their supporters.42
Judging progress
Assessing results in counter-insurgency wars is by nature a contentious
task, and involves difficult questions about the appropriate methodologies.
Sometimes unorthodox methods of analysis yield the most valuable answers.
The war in French Indochina from 1946 to 1954 provided a classic case.
When a French doctoral student, Bernard Fall, went to Vietnam in 1953, the
French authorities claimed that the war was going well, and showed maps
and statistics indicating that they controlled a large proportion of the territory.
But Fall soon realised that French claims about the amount of territory
they controlled were exaggerated, or at least lacked real meaning as far as
the conduct of government was concerned. He reached this conclusion both
by visiting Vietminh-held areas, and by inspecting tax records in supposedly
government-held areas: these latter showed a dramatic collapse in the
payment of taxes, and thus indicated a lack of actual government control.43
In Afghanistan, payment of taxes, or rather the absence of payment, works
as a measure of the government’s lack of control. As Astri Suhrke has shown,
taxation constitutes a uniquely small proportion – in 2005 it was only 8% –
of all estimated income in the national budget.44
By one key measure serious progress may appear to be being made in
the Afghan war. The numbers of refugees returning to Afghanistan since
the fall of the Taliban regime at the end of 2001 are one possible indicator of
a degree of progress. According to The United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), which played a key part in the process, between
1 January 2002 and 31 December 2007 4,997,455 refugees returned to
Afghanistan (see Table 1). This is the largest refugee return in the world in
a generation. It is striking that even in 2006 and 2007 (years of considerable
conflict in parts of Afghanistan) the returns continued, if at a reduced rate.
In the whole period 2002–07, the overwhelming majority of refugees have
been in two countries: Iran, from which 1.6m returned, and Pakistan, from
which 3.3m returned.45 Impressive as these figures are, four major qualifications
have to be made:
• First, they have to be understood against the backdrop of the sheer
numbers of Afghan refugees: at the end of 2007 Afghanistan was
still the leading country of origin of refugees worldwide, with
3.1m remaining outside the country. Thus in 2008, even after these
returns, Afghan refugees constitute 27% of the entire global refugee
population.
• Secondly, not all returns were fully voluntary. Within the countries
of asylum there have been heavy pressures on these refugees to
return, including the closing of some camps.
• Thirdly, experience of many returning refugees has included lack
of employment opportunities in Afghanistan, and in some cases
involvement in property disputes. There has been mismanagement
and corruption in the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.
Some refugees live in dire conditions in makeshift settlements.
All this has created much disappointment, bitterness and antigovernment
feeling.
• Fourthly, displacement continues. In the past two years unknown
numbers of returnees have left the country again. The number of
internally displaced persons within Afghanistan has also increased,
especially due to the fighting in the south, and now stands at about
235,000. Some returnees have seamlessly become internally displaced
persons.46
Table 1. Refugees returning to Afghanistan, 2002–2007
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
1,957,958 645,864 879,780 752,084 387,917 373,852
44 | Adam Roberts
Other developments confirm this sobering picture. The Afghan army
remains relatively small and highly dependent on outside support. As for the
insurgent forces, they appear to have no shortage of recruits. Large numbers
of fighters are able to cross into Afghanistan, mainly from Pakistan, and the
Taliban can also employ many locals, especially in seasons
when other work is in short supply. The fact that the estimated
unemployment rate is 40% means that insurgents
continue to have opportunities for recruitment. In Kabul
and other cities, terrorist attacks, once rare, have become
common. Serious observers have reported an atmosphere
of disappointment and bitterness in Afghanistan in
2008.47
The UN Secretary-General’s report of September 2008
states bluntly that the number of security incidents rose
to 983 in August 2008, the highest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and
a 44% increase year-on-year, and that ‘insurgent influence has intensified
in areas that were previously relatively calm, including in the provinces
closest to Kabul’.48 It reports some successes in the campaign against
poppy cultivation, and it strongly endorses the Afghanistan National
Development Strategy, adopted at the Paris Conference in Support of
Afghanistan, held on 12 June 2008. However, it confirms the picture of
the state of progress in the war against the Taliban which has also been
depicted by other sources, including the sober report by General David
McKiernan, the top US Commander in Afghanistan, who, at the same time
as seeking specific troop increases, has rejected simple notions, and indeed
the terminology, of a military ‘surge’;49 and the US National Intelligence
Estimate on Afghanistan, a draft version of which was leaked in October
2008, and which stated that the situation there was in a ‘downward spiral’.50
One grim statistic of the downward spiral is the casualty rate of IFOR and
Operation Enduring Freedom forces in Afghanistan. Fatalities have increased
each year from 57 in 2003 to 296 in 2008.51
As so often in counter-insurgency wars, the most useful assessments
may be those of independent witnesses who, just as Bernard Fall did in
French Indochina, have deep knowledge of a society and a healthy open-
Insurgent
forces appear
to have no
shortage of
recruits
mindedness about the contribution that outside forces can make to security.
Rory Stewart, who walked across Afghanistan in 2002, and later retired
from the UK diplomatic service to run a charitable foundation in Kabul, is
perhaps Fall’s nearest equivalent today. He has argued that ‘we need less
investment – but a greater focus on what we know how to do’. He is specifically
critical of increases in forces:
a troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans
are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge and the support for our
presence in the insurgency areas is declining. The Taliban, which was a
largely discredited and backward movement, gains support by portraying
itself as fighting for Islam and Afghanistan against a foreign military
occupation.52
The present campaign in Afghanistan is unlikely to result in a clear victory
for the Kabul government and its outside partners, because the sources of
division within and around Afghanistan are just too deep, and the tendency
to react against the presence of foreign forces too ingrained. The war could
yet be lost, or, perhaps more likely, it could produce a stalemate or a long
war of attrition with no clear outcome. The dissolution of Afghanistan into
regional fiefdoms – already an accustomed part of life – could continue and
even accelerate.
To some it may appear remarkable that Afghanistan has not reverted
more completely to type as a society that rejects outside intrusion. Part
of the explanation may be that this is not the only natural ‘default position’
for Afghans: there have also been countless episodes in which Afghan
leaders have sought, and profited from, alliances with outsiders. A second
factor is the ‘light footprint’ advocated by Lakhdar Brahimi, special
representative
of the secretary-general for Afghanistan: for all the limitations of
this approach, and the many departures from it since it was enunciated in
2002 with specific reference to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA), no one has convincingly suggested a better one.53 A third factor
is that – notwithstanding the disastrous killings of civilians as a result of
using air power – there has been a degree of restraint in the use of armed
46 | Adam Roberts
force: this has been important in at least slowing the pace of the process
whereby the United States and other outside forces come to be perceived as
alien bodies in Afghanistan. The interesting phenomenon of application of
certain parts of the law of armed conflict – namely the rules of targeting – as
if this was an international war is part of this process.
The role of the United Nations
The UN has some remarkable achievements to its credit in Afghanistan. It
helped to negotiate the Soviet withdrawal, and since then it has remained
engaged on the ground. It gave a degree of authorisation to the US-led
effort to remove the Taliban regime in 2001, it has authorised ISAF and has
provided a legitimate basis for its expanded roles throughout the country,
and it has been involved in the many subsequent efforts to help develop
Afghanistan, not least by assisting in the various elections held there since
2001. It has assisted the largest refugee return to any country since the
1970s.
Despite these achievements, the UN’s roles have been more limited than
those of the United States and its partners, especially in matters relating
to security. That the UN’s role in this crisis has been modest is not especially
surprising. Neither the terms of the UN Charter nor the record of the
Security Council justify the excessively high expectations many have had
in respect of the council’s roles. It was always a mistake to view the UN as
aiming to provide a complete system of collective security even in the best
of circumstances – and circumstances in and around Afghanistan are far
from being favourable for international involvement.
International legitimacy, moreover, is never a substitute for local legitimacy.
The council’s acceptance of regime change in Afghanistan was justified
once the Taliban had refused to remove al-Qaeda, and did much to legitimise
the aim of regime replacement, which could otherwise have seemed
a narrowly neo-colonial US action. Yet there is a danger that such international
conferrals of legitimacy can contribute to a failure to address the no
less important question of securing legitimacy in the eyes of the audience
that matters most: in this case, the peoples of Afghanistan and neighbouring
countries.
The NATO framework
In Afghanistan NATO is involved in ground-combat operations for the first
time in its history, far from its normal area of responsibility and against a
threat very different from the one it had been created to face. NATO involvement
in Afghanistan is widely viewed as ‘a test of the alliance’s political
will and military capabilities’.54 It is an exceptionally hard test. Indeed, the
implication that the future of the Alliance hangs on this test is reminiscent of
earlier views that US credibility was on the line in Vietnam.
NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan is in sharp contrast to its conduct
during the Cold War, when it repeatedly and studiously avoided involvement
in colonial conflicts – the French wars in Indochina and Algeria, the
Portuguese wars in Africa, the British in Malaya, the Dutch in Indonesia
and so on. Individual members were involved, but the alliance was not.
NATO also avoided involvement in post-colonial conflicts or, as in Cyprus,
limited itself to an essentially diplomatic role. Now NATO has become
engaged, with little public debate, in a country with all the hallmarks of a
post-colonial state undergoing conflict, especially the lack of legitimacy of
the constitutional system, government and frontiers.
NATO’s role in Afghanistan began in a problematic way, and so it has
continued. The day after the 11 September attack, the NATO Council stated:
‘if it is determined that this attack was directed from abroad against the
United States, it shall be regarded as an action covered by Article 5 of the
Washington Treaty, which states that an armed attack against one or more of
the Allies in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against
them all’.55 When Washington gave this offer the brush-off, preferring to
have a ‘coalition à la carte’ in which there would be no institutional challenge
to its leadership, there was disappointment and irritation in Europe. The
war in Afghanistan in October–December 2001, while effectively conducted
under US leadership, was also one chapter in the story of the declining size
of US-led wartime coalitions.
However, NATO rapidly came back into the picture, not least because
Washington came to recognise the need for long-term assistance in managing
societies that had been freed from oppressive regimes by US force.
NATO has been directly involved in Afghanistan at least since 9 August
48 | Adam Roberts
2003, when it took formal control of ISAF. It was in autumn 2003 that an
upsurge of violence that was part of a deteriorating security situation
began.56 ISAF’s notably broad UN Security Council mandate involves it in
a wide range of activities, including reconstruction and economic development,
and military and police training. Since 2006 ISAF
has undertaken an expanded range of responsibilities in
Afghanistan, involving combat as well as peacekeeping, in
an expanded area which includes provinces in which conflict
is ongoing.
It is truly remarkable that the reputation of the longestlived
military alliance in the world, comprised of states
with fundamentally stable political systems, should have
made itself vulnerable to the outcome of a war in the
unpromising surroundings of Afghanistan. There is much
nervousness about this among NATO’s European members, and this may
explain the reluctance of European leaders to make the kind of ringing
statements that often accompany war. Knowing that the outcome of any
adventure in Afghanistan is bound to be uncertain, they have wisely kept
the level of rhetoric low.
There may be another reason for the reluctance of many leaders of
European member states to make strong endorsements of their participation
in the war in Afghanistan. Many of the claims that can be made in favour
of the Afghan cause are also implicitly criticisms of the involvement in Iraq.
From the start in 2001, the US-led involvement in Afghanistan and the
subsequent
involvement of ISAF have both had a strong basis of international
legitimacy that was reflected in Security Council resolutions. In Afghanistan
there was a real political and military force to support, in the shape of the
Northern Alliance. In Afghanistan and Pakistan there were real havens for
terrorists. In Afghanistan, up to 5m refugees have returned since 2001. To
speak about these matters too loudly might be to undermine the US position
in Iraq, where the origins and course of the outside involvement have been
different, and where the flow of refugees has been outwards. NATO leaders,
anxious to put the recriminations of 2003 over Iraq behind them, may be
nervous about highlighting the differences between Afghanistan and Iraq.
European
leaders have
wisely kept
the level of
rhetoric low
A major question, heavy with implications for international security, is
how the setbacks experienced in Afghanistan are to be explained, especially
within NATO member states. The UN may be accustomed to failure, but
NATO is not. So far, the tendency has been to blame Pakistan, the messy
NATO command, the poor attention span of US governments, the unwillingness
of NATO allies to contribute, the weakness of Karzai, the corruption of
his government, the shortage of foreign money and troops – in other words,
to blame almost everything except the nature of the project.
The various reasons that have been given cannot be lightly dismissed.
For example, the lack of NATO unity in certain operational matters has been
striking. Different contributing states have different visions of ISAF’s role.
The most obvious difference is that the United States, Britain and Canada
tend to see it, albeit with some variations within each country, as encompassing
a counter-insurgency operation, while Germany and some others
see it more through the lens of a stabilisation mission. These positions are
not polar opposites, and each may have validity in different provinces
of Afghanistan, but the clash of perspective on this issue does not assist
cooperation of forces in difficult operations. Daniel Marston has gone so
far as to conclude that, ‘as of 2007, the main problem impeding coalition
forces’ successful application of counter-insurgency was decentralization
of responsibility’.57 The inability of member states to agree on a straightforward
and defensible common set of standards for treating prisoners in
the Afghan operations is symptomatic of deep divisions within the alliance.
Anxious not to be associated with shocking US statements and practices in
this matter, and insufficiently staffed and equipped to hold on to the prisoners
they capture, other NATO members have drawn up separate agreements
with the Afghan authorities, embodying a variety of different approaches to
how prisoners should be treated once in Afghan hands. There are serious
concerns that some detainees handed over to the Afghan authorities on this
basis have been maltreated.58 The complexity of the command-and-control
arrangements in Afghanistan is greater than that in past counter-insurgency
campaigns. Debates about this have inevitably reflected the US desire that
more contingents in ISAF should become directly involved in combat operations,
and the concern of some contributors that this should not happen.
50 | Adam Roberts
Although ISAF is now under a US commander, and the continuous rotation
of senior posts is ceasing, the arrangements for coordinating the work of
the three distinct forces – ISAF, the Afghan National Army and the US-led
Operation Enduring Freedom – continue to pose problems.59
The provision of forces in the numbers required for ISAF has been a highly
contentious matter within NATO states. Granted the scale of the problems
in Afghanistan, the levels of the three distinct forces are widely seen as low,
yet in many NATO member states there is a reluctance to increase the
commitment.
Opinion polls in five NATO member states with a high level of
involvement in Afghanistan show the public to be highly sceptical about it.60
An increase in such numbers risks running into opposition in many NATO
states, and also further antagonising Afghan opinion.
Political divisions have never been far from the surface, and will no doubt
be projected into future explanations of what went wrong. Continental
Europeans can convincingly blame the Americans and the British for having
taken their eye off the ball in Afghanistan in 2002–03, foolishly thinking that
the war there was virtually won and that they could afford to rush into a
second adventure in Iraq. Americans can blame the Europeans for putting
relatively few troops into ISAF, and being slow to back them up when the
going got rough in 2006–08. A less blame-centred explanation might be that
the reconstruction of Afghanistan, and the pursuit of counter-insurgency
there, was always going to be an extremely difficult task; that there are
limits to what outsiders should expect to achieve in the transformation of
distant societies with cultures significantly different from their own; and
that it never made sense to invest such effort in counter-insurgency in
Afghanistan without having even the beginnings of a strategy for the
neighbouring
regions of Pakistan.
Impact on international security
The problem of Afghanistan – including the complex interplay of international
actors who have pursued their interests there – has had an impressive
impact on international security issues in the past generation. It contributed
to the end of the Cold War and indeed of the Soviet Union itself. The Taliban
regime’s failure to control al-Qaeda activities launched the United States
into the huge and seemingly endless ‘war on terror’, and also resulted in
the UN Security Council claiming unprecedented powers to affect activities
within states. The Afghan war has embroiled NATO in a largely civil war
thousands of miles from its North Atlantic heartlands.
For the future, the greatest impact of Afghanistan on international security
may turn out to be highly paradoxical. It is obvious that Afghanistan,
along with Iraq, has called into question the idea that the United States, in
its supposed ‘unipolar moment’, could change even the most difficult and
divided societies by its confident use of armed force. But it is not only the
ideas of the neo-conservatives and their camp-followers that are in trouble.
In many ways the involvement of NATO in Afghanistan was textbook
liberal multilateralism: approved by the UN Security
Council, involving troops from 40 democracies, coupled
with the UN Assistance Mission, and with admirable
aims to assist the development and modernisation of
Afghanistan. The very ideas of rebuilding the world in
the Western image, and of major Western states having
an obligation to achieve these tasks in distant lands –
whether by unilateral or multilateral approaches – may
come to be viewed as optimistic. Or, to put it differently,
and somewhat cryptically, Afghanistan may not have
quite such a drastic effect on the American imperium as it had on the Soviet
one in the years up to 1991; but it may nevertheless come to be seen as one
important stage on the path in which international order became, certainly
not unipolar, and perhaps not even multipolar, but more based on prudent
interest than on illusions that Western ideas control the world. Afghanistan
may contribute to greater caution before engaging in interventionist projects
aimed at reconstructing divided societies.
Despite all the difficulties encountered in Afghanistan since the fall of
the Taliban in 2001, in the US presidential election campaign in 2008 both
Barack Obama and John McCain promised to increase the US commitment
to Afghanistan in 2009. There was little prospect either that the insurgency
would subside or that Washington would tip-toe out of the war. Furthermore,
both candidates advocated continuing and even extending the practice of
NATO in
Afghanistan
was textbook
liberal
multilateralism
52 | Adam Roberts
using US force against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan. The war’s
international dimension, and its significance for international security more
generally, was set to continue.
***
The Obama administration’s policy planning for Afghanistan is based on
the sound presumption that the Afghan problem cannot be addressed
in isolation. Although many countries have a potentially important role in
any settlement in Afghanistan – especially Iran, with its large numbers of
Afghan refugees and its major drug problem – Pakistan is at the core of
this approach. Granted the indissoluble connection between Afghanistan
and Pakistan, any policy in respect of the one has to be framed in light of
its effects on the other. At times it may even be necessary to prioritise as
between these two countries. The simple truth is that Pakistan is a far larger,
more powerful and generally more important country than Afghanistan. If
the price of saving Afghanistan were to be the destabilisation of Pakistan,
it would not be worth paying. A principal aim of the United States in the
region should have been, and indeed may have been, to avoid creating a
situation
in which that particular price had to be paid: yet at least once before,
in the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s, that, or something very like it, is
what happened.
The main conclusion of any consideration of the Pakistan factor in the
ongoing conflict in Afghanistan has to be that the policy of the United States
and allies – to strengthen central government in both countries – has been
operating in extremely difficult circumstances, has been pursued erratically,
and has been largely unsuccessful. While it is not obvious what the alternatives
might be, the general approach of backing non-Pashtuns in Pakistan
and Afghanistan risks exacerbating the Pashtun problem in both countries.
Three distinct causes – Pashtun, Taliban and al-Qaeda – have become conflated.
It should be a first aim of Western policy to reverse this dangerous
trend.
Because of the grim prospects of a stalemate, a war of attrition or worse in
Afghanistan, and also because of the advent of new governments in Pakistan
in 2008 and the US in 2009, there has been at least the beginning of
consideration
of alternative policies. Two stand out: each in its way addresses directly
the growth of the insurgency, and is based on a recognition that the Pakistan
dimension of the problem has to be considered alongside the Afghan. Both
options take into account the central requirement of any approach, that it
be geared to ensuring that neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan offer the kind
of haven for organising international terrorist actions that Afghanistan did
under Taliban rule.
The first option centres on negotiation with Taliban and other Pashtun
groups. The first question to be faced is whether, on either side of the border,
there are sufficiently clear hierarchical organisational structures with which
to negotiate. The second question is whether Afghan Taliban/Pashtun goals
are framed more in terms of control of the Afghan state along the completely
uncompromising lines followed by the Taliban in the years up to 2001, or in
more limited terms. Whatever the answers, negotiation in some form with
some of the insurgent groups and factions is inevitable. Indeed, in an informal
manner some is already happening. Combining fighting with talking is
quite common in insurgencies, not least because of their tendency to result
in stalemate. Yet it is never easy, and is likely to be particularly difficult for
those on both sides who have chosen to see the war in Afghanistan as a war
of good against evil. It is also likely to be difficult if, as at present, the Taliban
believe they are in a position of strength. A critical question to be explored
in any talks is whether, as some evidence suggests, the Taliban leaders have
learned enough from their disasters since seizing Kabul in 1996, and in particular
from their near-death experience in 2001, to be willing to operate in
a different manner in today’s Afghanistan.61 The scope and content of any
agreement are matters of huge difficulty. Some agreements concluded by
the Pakistan government in the past few years are widely seen as having
given Taliban leaders a licence to continue supporting the insurgency in
Afghanistan. This serves as a warning of the hazards of partial negotiation.
Yet the pressures for negotiation are very strong, and a refusal to consider
this course could have adverse effects in both countries.
In October 2008, after a two-week debate that was not always well
attended, the Pakistani parliament passed unanimously a resolution widely
54 | Adam Roberts
interpreted as suggesting, above all, a shift to negotiation. It was a complex
package, in which the parliament united to condemn terrorism and at the
same time was seen as ‘taking ownership’ of policy to tackle it. The resolution
said that regions on the Afghan border where militants flourish should
be developed, and force used as a last resort. It opposed the cross-border
strikes by US forces in Pakistan, but at the same time indicated a degree of
support for US policy. It called for dialogue with extremist groups operating
in the country, and hinted at a fundamental change in Pakistan’s approach
to the problem: ‘we need an urgent review of our national security strategy
and revisiting the methodology of combating terrorism in order to restore
peace and stability’.62 At the very least it provides one basis for the incoming
US administration to recalibrate the United States’ largely burnt-out policies
towards Pakistan.
The second option under discussion involves a fundamental rethinking
of security strategy in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the Afghan side
of the border it would call for some increase in ISAF or other outside forces,
especially to speed up the pace of expansion of the Afghan army, and thereby
provide back-up so that areas from which the Taliban have been expelled can
thereafter be protected. It would also call for cooperation in security matters
with local forces and councils, with all the hazards involved; for expansion
of aid and development programmes, especially in urgent matters such as
food aid in areas threatened by famine; and for a serious effort to address
the widespread corruption which makes a continuous mockery of Western
attempts to bring reform and progress to Afghanistan. On the Pakistan side
it would involve a protracted effort to develop a long-term policy (hitherto
non-existent) for establishing some kind of government influence in
the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and for a joined-up policy for
addressing the Taliban and al-Qaeda presence. On both sides of the border
it would necessitate reining in the use of air power in ways that reduce its
inflammation of local opinion.
It is highly improbable that either of these options on its own could
provide a substantial amelioration of a tangled and tragic situation. However,
a combination of the two – both negotiating, and rethinking the security
strategy – might just achieve some results.63 It would need to include other
1 On the revolution in military
affairs and related doctrines, and
how their weaknesses became evident,
see Lawrence Freedman, The
Transformation of Strategic Affairs,
Adelphi Paper 379 (Abingdon:
Routledge for the International
Institute for Strategic Studies, London,
2006).
2 Paul Wolfowitz, on CBS TV, ‘Face
the Nation’, 18 November 2001,
transcript available at http://www.
defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.
aspx?transcriptid=2442.
3 David Loyn, Butcher and Bolt: Two
Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement
in Afghanistan (London: Hutchinson,
2008).
4 On the Taliban’s history of supporting
opium production, which became
the mainstay of their war economy
in the late 1990s, see Ahmed Rashid,
Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords
(London: Pan Books, 2001), pp.
117–24.
5 Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos:
How the War against Islamic Extremism
is Being Lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Central Asia (London: Allen Lane,
2008), p. 401.
6 UN Security Council Resolution
1510 of 13 October 2003 expanded
elements, including a strong and credible commitment to leave as soon as
a modicum of stability is achieved. Such a combination would need to be
pursued in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It could only work if the new US
administration rejected the worst aspects of previous policies, and pursued
the matter with more consistent attention than in the past. It would be likely
to result in some unsatisfactory compromises, and might build on, rather
than fundamentally change, the pattern of regional warlordism so rooted in
Afghanistan. Yet if the war in Afghanistan is not to have even more fateful
consequences for international order than those seen in the past three
decades, it may be the direction in which events have to move.
Acknowledgements
This essay is a product of research conducted under the auspices of the Oxford University
Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. It is based on a presentation
at the US Naval War College International Law Department experts’ workshop on ‘The
War in Afghanistan’, 25–27 June 2008. A fuller version of the essay will appear in due
course in Michael N. Schmitt (ed.), The War in Afghanistan: A Legal Analysis (Newport, RI:
US Naval War College International Law Studies vol. 85). I am grateful to Alex Alderson,
Jeremy Allouche, John Nagl, Hew Strachan, Astri Suhrke and Susan Woodward for their
comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The usual disclaimer, that all responsibility for
error is mine and mine alone, applies with particular force in this case.
Notes
56 | Adam Roberts
ISAF’s sphere of operations to other
parts of Afghanistan. By the end of
2006, now operating under NATO,
it had responsibilities in virtually all
Afghanistan.
7 Rashid, Taliban, esp. pp. 26–9, 45,
90–94 and 137–8.
8 On the extent of Pakistani help to the
Taliban, see Rashid, Descent into Chaos;
and Seth Jones, Counterinsurgency
in Afghanistan (California: RAND
Corporation, June 2008), available
at http://www.rand.org/hot_topics/
afghanistan.html.
9 For an indictment predicated on the
assumption that a serious policy
could be devised see US Government
Accountability Office, Combating
Terrorism: The United States Lacks
Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the
Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven
in Pakistan’s Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (Washington DC: GAO,
April 2008).
10 Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti,
‘Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing
Raids in Pakistan’, New York Times, 10
September 2008.
11 For an excellent overview, from
the late nineteenth century to
Afghanistan, see Marston and
Malkasian (eds), Counterinsurgency
in Modern Warfare (Oxford: Osprey,
2008). Marston’s chapter is notably
critical of the failure of the United
States and its allies to train and equip
soldiers for counter-insurgency (p.
220).
12 Counterinsurgency, US Army Field
Manual 3-24 and Marine Corps
Warfighting Publication 3-33.5
(Washington, DC: Department of the
Army et al., 15 December 2006). This
publication has a short foreword
by Lt-Gen. David H. Petraeus (who
played a key part in its preparation)
and Lt-Gen. James F. Amos.
Henceforth, US Army Field Manual
3-24. Available at http://www.fas.org/
irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf.
13 The manual was issued by a publishing
firm as The US Army / Marine Corps
Counterinsurgency Field Manual: US
Army Field Manual no. 3-24 and Marine
Corps Warfighting Publication no. 3-33.5
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 2007). This edition has a new
foreword by Lt-Col. John A. Nagl, and
a new Introduction by Sarah Sewall.
14 UK Army Field Manual, vol. 1,
The Fundamentals, Part 10, Counter
Insurgency Operations (Strategic and
Operational Guidelines), last revised
in July 2001. The approach it laid out
and its principles are still regarded
as valid. Its biggest problem was the
context in which it was set. It makes
no mention of coalition operations,
or the problems of operating in other
people’s countries, the religious
and cultural dimensions, and the
effects of information proliferation
and information operations. The
task of updating it started in late
2005. It is still in development. The
Ministry of Defence’s Joint Doctrine &
Concepts Centre’s short (23 pages) The
Comprehensive Approach is a more general
survey intended to be relevant to
a wide range of operations; the word
‘counter-insurgency’ does not appear
in it. The Comprehensive Approach, Joint
Discussion Note 4/05 (Shrivenham,
Wiltshire: JDCC, January 2006),
available at http://www.mod.uk/
DefenceInternet/MicroSite/DCDC/
OurPublications/JDNP/. The UK
Ministry of Defence Joint Doctrine
Note 2/07, Countering Irregular Activity
Within a Comprehensive Approach (UK
Ministry of Defence, March 2007), has
not gone into general public circulation
and has not been greeted with
enthusiasm in the army.
15 John Kiszely, Post-modern Challenges
for Modern Warriors, Shrivenham
Papers No. 5 (Shrivenham: Defence
Academy of the UK, 2007), p. 14.
16 US Army Field Manual 3-24,
Acknowledgements, p. viii. Three
sources, all cited at length in the text,
are listed at this point. (The third,
not discussed here, was an article in
the New Yorker in January 2005.) See
also the Annotated Bibliography at
the end, which cites a wider range of
sources. It omits key critical writings
on the subject, most notably Peter
Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare
from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis
of a Political and Military Doctrine
(London: Pall Mall Press, 1964). The
omission of this title reflected a view
that it is hard to get Americans to take
on board French doctrines on counterinsurgency.
17 David Galula, Counterinsurgency
Warfare: Theory and Practice (London:
Pall Mall Press, 1964). Galula died in
1968. His work was belatedly published
in France as Contre-Insurrection:
Théorie et pratique (Paris: Economica,
2008).
18 Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating
Communist Insurgency: Experiences from
Malaya and Vietnam (London: Chatto &
Windus, 1966).
19 US Army Field Manual 3-24,
Introduction, p. ix.
20 US Army Field Manual 3-24, Foreword.
The Moros, perhaps the least known
of the insurgents cited, have been
involved in an armed insurrection in
the Philippines.
21 US Army Field Manual 3-24, p. 5-31.
23 Col. Charles Lacheroy, ‘La Guerre
Révolutionnaire’, talk on 2 July 1957
reprinted in La Défense Nationale, Paris,
1958, p. 322; cited in Paret, French
Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to
Algeria (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964),
p. 15. Paret comments that ‘nothing’,
in this case, means ‘the secure existence
of the status quo’.
24 US Army Field Manual 3-24, pp. 6-21
and 6-22.
25 See especially Thompson, Defeating
Communist Insurgency, pp. 17–20.
26 The geographical, sociological, political
and ethnic differences between
Malaya and South Vietnam were
evident to knowledgeable observers
even while the Vietnam War was
still ongoing. See Bernard B. Fall, The
Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military
Analysis (London: Pall Mall Press,
1963), pp. 339–40 and 372–6.
and 2-13.
28 See, for example, the obituary of Sir
Donald MacGillivray, the last British
High Commissioner for Malaya,
Times, 28 December 1966.
29 US Army Field Manual 3-24, pp. 5-15,
3-25, 6-21 and 8-16.
30 Rashid, Taliban, pp. 102–3.
31 See, for example, George Monbiot’s
ebullient attack on how US counterinsurgency
training was implicated
in the work of death squads in
Latin America over many decades,
58 | Adam Roberts
‘Backyard Terrorism’, Guardian, 30
October 2001, p. 17.
32 For a useful account of this general
problem (though it does not address
the case of Afghanistan), see Joel
S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak
States: State–Society Relations and
State Capabilities in the Third World
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1988).
34 Review Symposium, ‘The
New U.S. Army/Marine Corps
Counterinsurgency Field Manual
as Political Science and Political
Praxis’, in American Political Science
Association, Perspectives on Politics,
vol. 6, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 347–8
and 350. The four contributions
to this symposium are by Stephen
Biddle (347–50), Stathis N. Kalyvas
(351–3), Wendy Brown (354–7),
and Douglas A. Ollivant (357–60).
The symposium is available at
http://www.apsanet.org/imgtest/
POPJune08CounterInsurgency2.pdf.
35 Ibid., p. 348. See also the excellent
contribution of Stathis N. Kalyas, who
argues (p. 352) that by adopting the
people’s-war model, the authors of the
manual assume that the population
interacts either with the government
or the insurgents. This leads them to
conclude, incorrectly, that if the insurgents
are removed from the equation
the people will move closer to the
government.
36 Ibid., pp. 347–8 and 350.
and 7-6. These brief references to
Afghanistan do not describe the elements
that make the Afghan conflict
unique.
38 US Ambassador William B. Wood,
Media Roundtable, Kabul, 30
December 2008, available at http://
kabul.usembassy.gov/amb_
speech_3012.html.
39 Information from a conference at
Allied Rapid Reaction Corps headquarters,
Rheindahlen, 27 June 2007.
40 US Army officers have been particularly
vocal in expressing their
concerns about the performance of the
US Air Force regarding such matters
as bombing missions gone wrong and
insufficient priority to the provision of
surveillance aircraft. Thom Shanker,
‘At Odds with Air Force, Army Adds
its own Aviation Unit’, New York
Times, 22 June 2008.
41 Human Rights Watch, “Troops in
Contact”: Airstrikes and Civilian Deaths in
Afghanistan (New York: Human Rights
Watch, September 2008), p. 2, available
at http://hrw.org/reports/2008/
afghanistan0908/index.htm.
42 President Hamid Karzai, interview
published in New York Times, 26 April
2008.
43 Based on conversations I had with
Bernard Fall and material in his book
Street Without Joy: Indochina at War,
1946-54 (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole,
1961). He alludes to these issues in
Viet-Nam Witness 1953-1966 (London:
Pall Mall Press, 1966), p. 9. See also his
widow’s remarkable preface in Last
Reflections on a War (Garden City, NJ:
Doubleday, 1967), pp. 9–10.
44 Astri Suhrke, ‘Reconstruction as
Modernisation: The ‘Post-Conflict’
Project in Afghanistan’, Third World
Quarterly, vol. 28, no. 7, 2007, p. 1301.
45 Information from three UNHCR
sources: 2006 UNHCR Statistical
Yearbook (Geneva: UNHCR, December
2007), p. 36; 2007 Global Trends:
Refugees, Asylum-seekers, Returnees,
Internally Displaced and Stateless
Persons (Geneva: UNHCR, June
2008), pp. 8 and 9; and the UNHCR
Statistical Online Population
Database at www.unhcr.org/statistics/
populationdatabase.
46 Adam B. Ellick, ‘Afghan Refugees
Return Home, but Find Only a Life
of Desperation’, New York Times, 2
December 2008. Figure for internally
displaced persons from Economic and
Social Rights Report in Afghanistan – III
(Kabul: Afghanistan Independent
Human Rights Commission,
December 2008), p. 49, available at
http://www.aihrc.org.af/index_eng.
htm. See also Internal Displacement
Monitoring Centre, http://www.
internal-displacement.org.
47 For example Peter Beaumont,
‘Afghanistan: Fear, Disillusion and
Despair: Notes from a Divided Land
as Peace Slips Away’, Observer, 8 June
2008, pp. 34–5.
48 ‘The Situation in Afghanistan and its
Implications for International Peace
and Security: Report of the Secretary-
General’, UN doc. S/2008/617, 23
September 2008, paras 16 and 18.
49 Ann Scott Tyson, ‘Commander in
Afghanistan Wants More Troops’,
Washington Post, 2 October 2008,
p. A19. McKiernan described
Afghanistan as ‘a far more complex
environment than I ever found in
Iraq’.
50 See, for example, the report of the
draft National Intelligence Estimate on
Afghanistan at http://www.
nsnetwork.org/node/1017.
51 Figures for casualties of coalition
forces in Afghanistan from http://
icasualties.org/oef/.
52 Rory Stewart, ‘How to Save
Afghanistan’, Time, 17 July 2008.
53 UN Security Council, 4469th meeting, 6
February 2002, UN doc. S/PV.4469, p. 6.
54 See Paul Gallis and Vincent Morelli,
NATO in Afghanistan: A Test of the
Atlantic Alliance (Washington DC:
Congressional Research Service, July
2008), p. 1.
55 Statement adopted at a meeting of the
North Atlantic Council, Brussels, 12
September 2001.
56 For a particularly well-informed
account of the evolution of the roles
of the US and NATO since 2001,
see Astri Suhrke, ‘A Contradictory
Mission? NATO from Stabilization to
Combat in Afghanistan’, International
Peacekeeping, vol. 15, no. 2, April 2008,
pp. 214–36.
57 Marston, ‘Lessons in 21st-Century
Counterinsurgency: Afghanistan
2001–07’, in Daniel Marston
and Carter Malkasian (eds),
Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare
(Oxford: Osprey, 2008), p. 240.
58 See Adam Roberts, ‘Torture and
Incompetence in the “War on Terror”’,
Survival, vol. 49, no. 1, Spring 2007,
pp. 199–212; and the Amnesty report
Afghanistan – Detainees Transferred to
Torture: ISAF Complicity? (London:
Amnesty International, November
2007), pp. 20–30.
59 See, for example, US Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates’s expression
of concern about dual command
and control in ‘Gates: Afghanistan
Command Restructuring Worthy of
Consideration’, remarks at Texarkana,
60 | Adam Roberts
Texas, 2 May 2008. Available at http://
www.defenselink.mil/news/
newsarticle.aspx?id=49769. The coalition
of forces acting in support of the
Afghan government consists of three
basic elements. The first is the Afghan
National Army, which has a modest
manpower level of about 57,000. The
second is ISAF, which now comprises
some 51,350 troops from 40 NATO
and non-NATO countries. The largest
contingents are those of the United
States, with 19,950 troops, and the
United Kingdom, with 8,745. The
third basic element is the force of
well over 10,000 troops (almost all of
them American) who are part of the
US Operation Enduring Freedom, which
focuses particularly on the counterterrorist
mission in Afghanistan.
Information on ISAF troop numbers
and areas of operation from http://
www.nato.int/.
60 See, for example, Gallis and Morelli,
NATO in Afghanistan, p. 13.
61 For evidence that Taliban fighters in
Afghanistan have learned from the
mistakes of the period of Taliban rule
up to 2001 see Ghaith Abdul-Ahad,
‘When I Started I had Six Fighters.
Now I have 500’, Guardian, 15
December 2008, pp. 1, 4 and 5.
62 Robert Birsel, ‘Pakistan Parliament
Seen United against Militancy’,
Reuters report from Islamabad, 23
October 2008, http://lite.alertnet.org/
thenews/newsdesk/ISL355611.htm.
63 Such a combined approach, in respect
of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, has
been advocated authoritatively by
John A. Nagl and Nathaniel C. Fick,
‘Counterinsurgency Field Manual:
Afghanistan Edition’, Foreign Policy,
January–February 2009, http://
www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.
php?story_id=4587.

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